You are here

Rudy Mehrbani

Share

Rudy Mehrbani

Member

Rudy Mehrbani was appointed to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2017.

Rudy Mehrbani is a Spitzer Fellow and Senior Counsel at The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Prior to this role, Mehrbani served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House, where he was responsible for recruiting, appointing, and professionally developing political appointees across the executive branch of the U.S. government.

From 2014 to 2016, he was General Counsel of the Peace Corps, serving as the principal legal officer and a senior advisor to the Director of the Peace Corps. Mehrbani’s leadership and creativity at the Peace Corps were critical to facilitating innovative partnerships with public and private institutions in support the agency’s development priorities and integral to the First Lady’s Let Girls Learn initiative, a government-wide effort to expand access to education for women and girls around the globe. During his tenure, the Peace Corps finalized agreements for new programs and expanded to Viet Nam and Myanmar.

Prior to serving at the Peace Corps, he was Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office. He also served at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as Special Policy Advisor in the Office of the Secretary, where he helped manage HUD’s regulatory agenda and stand up the Hurricane Sandy Task Force.

Mehrbani also held a variety of roles in the White House, including Domestic Director for Presidential Personnel, Senior Vetting Counsel, and Deputy Associate Counsel. Before entering the federal government, Mehrbani practiced law as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago, where he worked on a wide range of complex commercial cases in Kirkland’s litigation practice group. Earlier in his career, he worked as a budget analyst for D.C. Public Schools and as a technical consultant for Appian Corporation.

Mehrbani received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. Mehrbani has also completed an international comparative business law program at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, and has studied at the University of Salamanca in Spain.

Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Promoting Mutual Understanding

Our Mission

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State fosters mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries to promote friendly and peaceful relations. We accomplish this mission through academic, cultural, sports, and professional exchanges that engage youth, students, educators, artists, athletes, and rising leaders in the United States and more than 160 countries.